Not just for whistleblowers, but likely to encourage more of them anyway.

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Intelexit, which claims to be the "the world’s first exit program for the intelligence community," has been launched today. It says it "speaks to employees who are unsatisfied in their jobs, due to moral conflicts, and encourages them to consider termination of employment as an act of personal strength and a contribution to democracy." To help them do so, Intelexit provides counseling, alternative career advice, and planning to help with the resignation itself. The Intelexit website includes a video featuring the NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, security and privacy expert, Bruce Schneier, and Walter Eichner, a former Stasi employee, as well as further information about the organisation and its aims.

Initially, those working at three major intelligence services will be targeted: the NSA, GCHQ and Germany's BND, although the hope is that the scheme could be extended to other countries. Today, lorries with billboards have been circling GCHQ and NSA buildings to make employees aware of the organisation, and brochures are being handed out at GCHQ and BND. Tomorrow, Intelexit says it will begin making phone calls and sending faxes directly to the offices of these agencies.

Intelexit, which has the catchline "Be smart. Exit intelligence now," was set up by the Berlin-based Peng!, "a collective of smart and silly people producing creative political stunts and enriching campaigns with subversion, humour and civil disobedience," working with local activists. One of them, Jérémie Zimmermann, explained in an email to Ars how the project had grown out of off-the-record conversation with men and women currently working in the intelligence services.

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"They would enter these services with a genuine will of serving the general interest and defending values such as their country's constitution, their fellow citizens freedoms, democracy at large, etc... and would end up in some grayish office doing exactly the opposite, with mass surveillance, drone strikes etc. This cognitive dissonance creates a situation of moral despair." Intelexit was created to help them escape from that situation with the least damage to themselves and their families.

In an interview with the German blog netzpolitik.org, a spokesperson for Intelexit emphasised that it would help intelligence agents leave services whether or not they wanted to become whistleblowers, since that was a personal matter for the individual concerned. However, it seems likely that Intelexit will make it easier for whistleblowers to step forward, and follows in the footsteps of the Snowden Treaty, launched last week, which calls for them to be offered greater protection. In addition, the Intelexit organisers say that they hope that their exit programme will "break down the structures of secret services and force reform," much as Edward Snowden's leaks have already begun to do.